Pines

surgery. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
    “I don’t consent,” Ethan said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “I don’t consent to surgery. I want to be transported to a hospital in Boise.”
    “It’s too risky. You could die before you got there.”
    “I want out of this town right now.”
    Jenkins vanished.
    A blinding light bore down on Ethan’s face from overhead.
    He heard Jenkins’s voice. “Nurse, calm him down, please.”
    “This?”
    “No, that one.”
    “I’m not crazy,” Ethan said.
    He felt Jenkins pat his hand.
    “No one’s saying you are. It’s just that your mind is broken, and we need to fix it.”
    Nurse Pam leaned over into Ethan’s field of vision.
    Beautiful, smiling, something comforting about her presence, and maybe it was just rote familiarity, but Ethan clung to it nonetheless.
    “My goodness, Mr. Burke, you look simply awful. Let’s see if we can’t make you just a pinch more comfortable, OK?”
    The needle was goliath, the biggest Ethan had ever seen, its end dripping silver beads of whatever drug the syringe contained.
    “What’s in there?” Ethan asked.
    “Just a little something to steady those jangled nerves.”
    “I don’t want it.”
    “Hold still now.”
    She tapped the antecubital vein on the underside of his right arm, Ethan straining so hard against the steel bracelets he could feel his fingers turning numb.
    “I
don’t
want it.”
    Nurse Pam looked up, and then leaned in so close to Ethan’s face he could feel her eyelashes splay across his when she blinked. He smelled her lipstick and, at close range, could see the pure emerald clarity of her eyes.
    “You hold still, Mr. Burke”—she smiled—“or I’ll jam this motherfucker straight to the bone.”
    The words chilled him, Ethan squirming even harder, the handcuff chains rattling against the railing.
    “Don’t you touch me,” he seethed.
    “Oh, so you want to play it this way?” the nurse asked. “OK.” Her smile never fading, she altered her grip on the syringe, now holding it like a knife, and before Ethan realized her intention, she stabbed the needle into the sidewall of his gluteus maximus, the needle buried to the syringe.
    The spearing pain lingered as the nurse strolled back across the room to the psychiatrist.
    “You didn’t hit a vein?” Jenkins asked.
    “He was moving too much.”
    “So how long before he’s under?”
    “Fifteen tops. Are they ready for him in the OR?”
    “Yeah, roll him out.” Jenkins directed his last comment to Ethan as he backpedaled toward the door: “I’ll be by to look in on you after they finish the cutting and pasting. Good luck, Ethan. We’re gonna get you all fixed up.”
    “I don’t consent,” Ethan said with as much force as he could muster, but Jenkins was already out of the room.
    Through his swollen eyes, Ethan tracked Nurse Pam’s movement around to the head of his gurney. She grasped the railing, and the gurney began to move, one of the front wheels squeaking as it wobbled across the linoleum.
    “Why aren’t you respecting my wishes?” Ethan asked, struggling to control his voice, trying for a softer approach.
    She made no response, just continued to roll him out of the room and into the corridor, which stood as empty and quiet as ever.
    Ethan lifted his head, saw the nurses’ station approaching.
    Every door they passed was closed, not a shred of light filtering out from under any of them.
    “There’s no one else on this floor, is there?” Ethan asked.
    The nurse whistled a tune to the rhythm of the squeaky wheel.
    “Why are you doing this to me?” he asked, and there was a note of desperation in his voice that wasn’t staged,which sourced straight from the wellspring of terror that was mounting steadily, moment by moment, in the pit of his stomach.
    He stared up at her—a strange angle from his prone position on the gurney that showed the underside of her chin, her lips, her nose, the ceiling panels, and long fluorescent lightbulbs scrolling past.
    “Pam,” he said. “Please. Talk to me. Tell me what’s happening.”
    She wouldn’t even look down at him.
    On the other side of the nurses’ station, she released the gurney, let it roll itself to a stop, and walked on toward a pair of double doors at the terminus of the corridor.
    Ethan glanced at the signage above them.
    SURGICAL
    One of the doors swung open, and a man emerged wearing blue scrubs, his hands already covered in latex gloves.
    A face mask hid